


A Shoulder to Cry On

by Andante_Andante



Series: All Bastards Are Brothers [2]
Category: A Court of Thorns and Roses Series - Sarah J. Maas
Genre: Crying, F/M, Friendship, Friendship is my kink, Mating Bond, POV Azriel (ACoTaR), pre-elriel if you squint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-14
Updated: 2020-06-14
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:54:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24721153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Andante_Andante/pseuds/Andante_Andante
Summary: Upset over the state of his and Nesta's relationship, Cassian relies on Azriel to help him out.
Relationships: Azriel & Cassian (ACoTaR), Nesta Archeron/Cassian, pre-Nesta Archeron/Cassian
Series: All Bastards Are Brothers [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1983217
Comments: 9
Kudos: 47





	A Shoulder to Cry On

**Author's Note:**

> the first 500 words is just backstory lol sorry
> 
> *set a few years after the events of acofas

It had been the third time in one week that Rhys had called a family meeting.

Recently, with the Illyrian rebellions finally squashed and the turbulent relationships between the Courts still yielding trouble, as well as the ever-constant rebuilding from Hybern, it was becoming hard to get everyone in the same place at the same time. It seemed to Azriel that someone was always away on business. However, by some miracle in the past week, they had all managed to be present at not only one family dinner, but three.

The first had been, in all accounts, a failure. Rhys and Feyre had learned that she was carrying a daughter, not a son, and they had called a meeting to celebrate the future High Lady of the Night Court. The wine and the appetizers had been fun while they lasted, but before they had even filled up their plates with dinner, Feyre had made a comment about becoming fat, so Rhys kicked everyone out of the house in order to show his mate how much he still cherished her body. A sweet sentiment, but even if Rhys had allowed them to stay, no one would have wanted to be around for that, least of all Azriel.

The second, at least, had been a full dinner, and a delicious one at that, but it had ended up as more of a meeting than anything else. Each member of the Inner Circle briefed the group on their tasks and their tasks alone, so instead of their family, it was their Court. He wasn't Azriel for that dinner, but _shadowsinger_ and _spymaster_ , and Rhys wasn't his brother, but his deadly High Lord. They all hated these dinners. No one liked to be an advisor when they could be a friend.

To make up for it, tonight, as he had heard Rhys tell Elain earlier, was meant purely for their family: A break in the chaos of their lives when they would leave all of their worries and responsibilities behind and laugh and drink until the stars rose high in the sky.

And that was what it had been.

The eight of them, counting his High Lady’s sisters, sat around a new, slightly larger table, and simply talked. Rhys told stories of their youthful adventures, Cassian and Amren bickered about nothing, Mor drank and laughed loudly in his face, and Azriel, as per usual, joined Nesta in a quiet aloofness and watched everything go down. 

Feyre had hardly eaten at dinner, pretending to enjoy herself, but she wasn't fooling him. Her pale face and subtle disgust as certain foods passed were incriminating, and the glances she shared back and forth with Rhys solidified it enough so that he didn't need his shadows to tell him anything. Nonetheless, it wasn’t at all surprising to him that when Rhys invited them all to stay for drinks, Feyre declined, and instead resigned herself to the bedrooms upstairs. 

"I think that I will leave as well," Nesta announced to the room, sending a small smile to the remaining Archeron sister. She waited for the chorus of goodbyes and a kiss on the cheek from Elain before closing the door behind her. 

“Rita’s or drinks tonight?” Mor asked the remaining. 

Rhys groaned loudly. “Just drinks, please. I’m too tired to deal with dancing.” 

Mor cocked an eyebrow, “Feyre keeping you up at night?” 

“My daughter is,” he said. “Or rather she keeps my mate up.” 

“Take it from someone who’s millennia older than you,” Amren sneered. “You won’t get a good sleep ever again.” 

Rhys winced as Mor patted him on the back. “Can’t wait.” 

Azriel smirked and turned to his other brother who was intensely staring at the wood floor, eyebrows furrowing. Azriel was about to address him when he suddenly chugged the rest of his wine and muttered something about walking the girl home, pulling the door closed behind him too hard for the others not to notice. And sure enough, as he turned back around, all four of them were looking. 

Azriel noted how their expressions changed one by one. Rhys frowned at the open door, where Cassian had stood just moments before, Mor did the same, Amren looked bored, though her eyes betrayed a hint of annoyance, and Elain cringed, _violently._ Azriel couldn't blame her for that. If he hadn't spent centuries perfecting his own poker face, he supposed that his expression would look very similar to hers. 

Nobody dared to say anything. It wasn’t until Rhys cleared his throat to thank Nuala and Cerridwen that the easy conversation started up again, though Azriel wouldn’t join. Instead, he slowly drifted out of the dining room and peered out the window. Both Cassian and Nesta were long gone, and Azriel got a bad feeling in his stomach. 

He sent a look back into the room. Rhys was chatting with Amren as Elain cleared off the table. Part of him ached to stay and assist the latter, but Cassian needed him more. Without another glance from the others, Azriel silently wrapped himself in his shadows and disappeared. 

The night had been a pleasant temperature, but the air was now thick and moist, and he loathed the way it stuck to his skin like sweat after a long day of training.

By the time he was right outside the house’s cast iron fence, he could see all the way down the street, he watched as his brother caught up to Nesta and grabbed her elbow. For a few moments they walked together, but then she turned to face him. He couldn't hear her words, nor would he use his shadows to spy on them, but her body was rigid in a way that was sharp and commanding. Maybe not in a mean or prickly way, not as she used to be, but in a way that left no room for Cassian to rebound. With that, she continued her path home and left Cassian stranded on the footbridge.

Cassian watched her presumably until she rounded the corner before turning to face the water. Azriel waited a few minutes to see if he would return to the house, but he stayed glued to the spot, wings dropping.

Azriel frowned lightly and flew down to the bridge, landing just on the edge so he could walk up. Cassian didn't lift his head from the wall when he spoke to him.

"Go away, Az."

"Not unless you come with me," he said back coolly, sticking his hands into his pockets.

"Yeah," the general sniffed. "Well, then I guess we're both in for disappointment this evening."

"She'll come around, Cass."

"I wish I could agree with you." 

Cassian had told Azriel about the bond when he and Elain visited the camps a few years earlier. Elain had stayed with Nesta while Azriel had taken Cassian away and gotten him drunk.

He didn't regret it. Cassian had needed a night to let go, to not care for Nesta or any kind of rebellion. It had taken that night of freedom and three quarters of a bottle of brandy for Cassian to confess to Azriel what they all had suspected for months: he and Nesta were mates.

He remembered blocking the air around them with his shadows, preventing unwanted ears from listening in, and keeping his face neutral and non-judgmental. He remembered not wanting to risk setting Cassian off on him. Tonight would most likely end the same way. Though, the chances of waking up the next morning to a regretful, hungover, and angry Cassian were much slimmer. 

Still, Azriel had kept his promise that he wouldn’t tell anyone, and if that meant that he’d have to be a shoulder to lean on tonight, then he was happy to do it. He would do a lot of things to get Cassian to smile again. He hated the heartbroken look on his face. It made him want to march up to Nesta's apartment and yell until she apologized. But, he wouldn't.

He knew what it was like to be ripped from the only world he knew. He knew what it was like to be forced into a strange place with strange people and with powers nobody understood. To hear, and see, and feel things that nobody else could...no, he too knew what it was like to have powers _he_ _also_ didn't understand. Little did she know, Azriel was her once. And if he hadn't had the shadows, or Rhys and Cassian to keep him company those first years of his life, he wouldn't know what would have happened.

Cassian sniffed again, bringing Azriel out of his own introspection, and he glanced down, frowning, to see that his brother was gripping the railing so hard that his knuckles were white.

"Cassian," Azriel said gently.

"I'm fine, Az."

"We've already established that that isn't true."

"I'll _be_ fine, then."

"Cass," he said again. This time Cassian didn't respond, choosing to wipe furiously at his eyes, so Azriel said his name one more time. This one commanded him to look at him. " _Cassian_."

" _What_?" Cassian turned around, his siphon flashing. Anybody else would have recoiled, choosing most likely to leave the commander alone rather than facing the wrath of his killing power, but Azriel wouldn't. Instead, he stared straight into his friend's now-red eyes, and as he had done countless times in their younger years, he opened his arms out wide.

Cassian looked unsure for a second, glancing around at the deserted streets, but he eventually gave in and wrapped himself around his brother, burying his wet face in his neck. Azriel only rubbed a soothing hand on Cassian's back.

"Gods, Az. I don't know how Rhys did it," he said. "Every time she's near me...I can’t think of anything else. Everything is just _Nesta, Nesta, Nesta._ I can’t breathe, I can’t _think,_ it’s only her. I swear she sets my soul on fire, and she doesn't even fucking know it.” Azriel remained silent, egging Cassian to keep talking. “Why can’t she just see me? Does she think about me at all?” 

“She does, brother, I swear to you,” Azriel murmured back.

“How do you know that?” 

Azriel thought back to all the longing stares she gave him when she thought no one was looking, and all of the times the shadows gossiped into his ear. “I just do.” 

Cassian broke away from Azriel's embrace and began to pace the short width of the footbridge.

"I thought that when I found my mate, it would plainly be the best fuck I ever had. All I'd really known about mates was Rhys' parents, and they hated each other, so romance never clicked into it. But Nesta," Cassian faltered as he said her name. "She's way more than a good fuck. Mother's tits, she's way more than a romance. I know I sound like one of her slutty novels, but I swear, she's the other half of me. The half I hadn't known I was missing."

Azriel knew the feeling well. He had replayed that moment when Mor first walked into the Illyrian camp all of those years ago in his mind too many times not too. He had believed her to be his other half, to be the light to his void darkness, and though now his love for Mor was beginning to fade, he still understood the pain of not sharing his life with her, and he would be damned to let Cassian suffer from the same fate.

“What do you want her to be, Cass?” 

At that moment, a thin drizzle started to fall from the sky. Cassian looked up at it before speaking. 

“I want her to be the person that I spend the rest of my life loving,” Cassian looked back to his brother. “Who I can fight for and come home to at the end of the day, who I can raise a family with...that is if she wants one.” 

“That’s remarkably soft for you, brother.” 

"I love her, Az,” he said, his voice low and defeated. “And it's driving me crazy."

Cassian collapsed onto the bench and put his head into his hands while Azriel continued to lean against the railing. They fell into companionable silence after that, the only noise becoming the soft thunder and Cassian’s occasional sniff. 

"Cass," Azriel started a while later, as the rain started to get heavier. "We should probably go back inside."

"Okay." It made Azriel's heart hurt to see Cassian so downtrodden and dejected. He stood up and reached a hand down to his brother, who wiped the long hair from his eyes and grabbed it. "Thanks."

Their walk kept the silence for the most part, Cassian lost in his thoughts, but before they turned the corner into the driveway of the townhouse, Azriel chirped quietly, "At least now they won't be able to tell that you've been crying."

Cassian let out a laugh. It was dry and emotionless, sure, but it was a start, Azriel hoped. "I suppose you're right, Az.”

As they walked in through the door, the remaining three sets of eyes stared at them, the room quiet as they waited for an explanation. Any other dinner, he'd let Cassian speak for the both of them, letting him take the brunt of whatever misadventure that they had gotten themselves into at that time. It was one thing he always deeply appreciated about his brother. Azriel hated being the center of attention, hated all the eyes staring at him, hated how it made him feel small, even if it was just their family, and for Cassian to see that and absorb what excess attention he could, Azriel was eternally grateful. However, now was not the time for him to shrink back in the shadows and watch his brother take the reins. It was time for Azriel to return the favor.

"It was stuffy in here," Azriel supplied, knowing that Cassian couldn't. "We stepped out for fresh air."

"In the rain?" Rhys asked softly. Cassian stilled beside him as if his brother had just revealed a deep secret of his. Azriel tore his gaze away from his brothers in favor of Elain and silently pleaded with her to say something. _Weak._ His shadows chided him. 

"Well," Elain huffed. "The rain has only just started, and they probably weren't exactly keen on flying in bad weather."

"I'd rather not be struck by the wrath of the mother," Azriel replied smoothly. "What's the big deal, Rhysie? Scared of little rain?"

Amren snorted, and Azriel felt a renewed sense of control, even if it only slightly reassured him.

Rhysand rolled his eyes at his brother and held his hands up in fake surrender. "I was just asking."

"What are we drinking?" Azriel said, walking into the living area. Rhysand began to speak about a case of wine that Lucien had sent over from the Day Court, but Azriel wasn't listening. His focus was put entirely on Cassian, who remained close to the door as if he was planning to leave again. Wordlessly, he instructed his shadows to push Cassian over, though he seemed to wake up from his trance and walk the remaining way himself. Rhys and Elain didn't seem to notice his little trick, but Amren caught his eye with a smirk. Azriel glared back, daring her to say something.

"Rhys, dry off your dogs before they start to smell," Amren wrinkled her nose from across the table. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> I know that the lack of actual Nessian is disappointing, but I don't love the idea that accepting the mating bond is the only way that Nesta will heal (she needs to be in the right mind before she ties her soul indefinitely), so I didn't make them canon...yet. 
> 
> As always, let me know if there any mistakes as I am happy to fix them!!


End file.
